and so it begins

Alta's opening day was Friday, November 23rd, and with perfect timing, a lovely storm came in, bringing 15-30" around the mountains of northern Utah, from Wednesday night through Saturday afternoon.  Opening Day is often (during normal snow years) on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and H likes to take that day off to ski.  This year, with Opening Day being on a holiday - the day after Thanksgiving - we opted not to go, figuring that it would be much, much more crowded.  Plus, the ski bus isn't running yet and we don't have snow tires on either vehicle, so we didn't really have a way to get up the canyon.

In line at Collins

So we waited until Sunday, when the storm had moved off, leaving mostly clear skies and chilly temperatures.  Alta's new signs failed to display the current temperatures but we figure it was between 13 - 20 F, enough to make my toes really cold.  At first there wasn't much open - and all of it in the shade - just a couple runs down from the Collins and Wildcat lifts.  Ski patrol was working like crazy to get more open, though, and by noon Sugarloaf was up and running and Ballroom was open as well.  Sunnyside was not running, however, meaning that all the little kids and beginners were fighting for space on the trails with the hotdoggers, bombing down from the top.  Around 1 p.m. we'd had enough of dodging other people and gave up our parking spot to head back home.

The snow was much, much better than either of us expected.  While certain high traffic areas got skied off quickly, the snow was general soft under our skis, without the harsh scratching that you hear when you ski man-made snow.  Sugarloaf in particular was in really good shape.  With another storm moving in later this week, hopefully the good conditions will only get better.